346 ON THE RED SANDSTONE, MARBLE, 
gether, and so perplexing is the intricacy, that I felt as if I had 
got into a forest of hills, and was in danger of losing my way. 
From the imperfect drainage occasioned by the want of con- 
tinuous valleys, the district abounds in mossy swamps and little 
shallow lakes, or rather lochans, remarkable for the vast num- 
ber of water-lilies that, in the flowering season, mottle their 
surface, and relieve, by their quiet beauty, the general rug- 
gedness of the scenes in which they occur. A brown and 
scanty vegetation, much interrupted by gray precipices, par- 
tially clothes the hill-sides; and, among the groups of turf 
cottages which the traveller occasionally sees embosomed in 
solitary recesses beside their scanty patches of corn, he may 
find the last lingering remains of rude and primitive contri- 
vances that have become obsolete in every other part of the 
British islands. Those small cottage-mills,—the immediate 
successors of the hand-mill, —in which the water-wheel moves 
horizontally, and which, when laid open by the antiquary in 
some encroaching moss or drifted sand-hill, he regards as the 
relics of a remote time, —are still extant and in use in this 
rugged gneiss region. 
The Red Sandstone of the district rests immediately over 
the gneiss, but belongs to a widely different epoch. The gneiss 
we find uptilted in every direction, as if it had been operated 
upon by the disturbing forces from many centres, and for many 
ages; whereas the sandsone which rests unconformably over 
it presents a series of unbroken strata, reclining usually at low 
angles, and which had no share in the deep-seated convulsions 
which uptilted and broke up the rocks below. Along the 
coast, — as in Durness in the Cape Wrath district, at Ru- 
Store, and on towards Loch Broom, Gairloch, and Applecross, 
it presents very much the scenic character of the Old Red 
Sandstone on the east coast ; and nothing can be more striking 
than the change which takes place in the landscape, in passing 
